An ungentlemanly way of doing things

‘EXCUSE ME, but I was here before those ladies,” said the tall man with the thick black hair, gesturing behind me.

I looked down the bar and saw two women sitting. Their large purses were already on the bar, and they both had half full glasses of chardonnay.

“Can you go tell them that I was here first?” he asked.

I looked at the women, and then I looked at him.

“Let me see if I understand you. You want me to go down there and tell those two ladies to get out of those two seats so that you can it down.”

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so good,” he said.

I just looked at him.

Let’s just say that the women remained seated. Oftentimes when people are made aware of the inappropriateness of their behavior, they will modify it. Then again, sometimes they won’t.

Ten minutes later the veracity of that thought echoed again, with the echo of a similar conversation.

“I am saving that seat,” the impeccably groomed seated man said as I gestured for the young woman to sit in the empty chair.

One thing to remember about bars, customers are not entitled to save seats. Bar seats are for patrons already at the bar, not on their way. Furthermore, the seating arrangements are at the discretion of the bar, not the patron. You may ask if it is OK to save a seat, but you may not tell other patrons not to sit down. It’s really as simple as that. Seated patrons equal income, empty stools equal nothing. Would you stand outside a restaurant and stop people from going in just because you have some friends coming? Outside or inside, it’s the same thing.

“It’s for a lady, sir,” I said.

“Well I’m waiting for a lady, too.”

“But, this lady is already here,” I said, losing patience.

Confronting him with his behavior didn’t seem to be working.

“We’re going to let the lady sit down,” I said, leaving no more room for argument.

Thirty minutes later the bar had filled up and his “lady” finally arrived. It was so busy I didn’t even look at her. But I did notice what happened.

The “gentleman” asked the seated woman to stand so that his date could sit. I guess the idea that he should stand was out of the question. Of the many, many dates I’ve witnessed, I have observed that women often notice when men are rude to other women, even when they are being gentlemanly to them.

“Did that guy just make that lady get up?” asked my co-worker.

“Yep. Maybe he hasn’t dated many women.”

“And for a fairy, no less,” said my co-worker.

“Whoa, just because I said he hasn’t dated many women, doesn’t mean you get to be politically incorrect.”

He looked at me oddly.

“No, it’s a real fairy,” he said, pointing at the man’s date.

I followed his finger and looked at the “fairy” sitting at the bar. Diaphanous white gown, check. Silken blond hair in a Tinkerbell bun, check. Sparkly slippers, check. Glitter, check. All crowned with a lacy garland of white posies. A fairy indeed. All that was missing were two tiny wings.

One pear cosmopolitan later, I noticed something else. The impeccably groomed man’s date had two of the biggest hands I have ever seen and an Adam’s apple, leaving me with these thoughts:

“Suum cuique pulchrum est,” said the Roman philosopher Cicero (“To each their own is beautiful”) and by most accounts he, too, also wore a dress (a toga).

Quacking like a duck and swimming like a duck, don’t necessarily make a duck.

“You’re a complex Freudian hallucination having something to do with my mother and I don’t know why you have wings, but you have very lovely legs and you’re a very nice tiny person,” Peter Pan as Peter Banning, spoken to Tinkerbell in the 1991 film “Hook,” played by Marin’s own Robin Williams.